Annoyance
by Roadstergal
Summary: How does Lister annoy me, Rimmer says? Let me count the ways. Slash. A neurotic peek at life and sex. Set between Tikka To Ride and Stoke Me A Clipper.
1. Chapter 1

Rimmer was certain - certain! - that somewhere on Earth, there had been a course offered on how to tick him off. Multiple courses. Smeg With Arnold Rimmer, Beyond Smegging With Arnold Rimmer, Annoying The Ever-Goited Smeg Out Of Arnold Rimmer, and Making Arnold Rimmer's Death A Living Hell. And Lister, who had stared out of the window or tossed paper airplanes or schemed ways to get lucky with the brunette next door instead of paying attention to his courses, who had left art college after less than a day - Lister had taken _those_ courses, paid attention, and passed with flying colors. There was no other way to explain it. 

Every one of his loves seemed purpose-designed to annoy the smeg out of Rimmer. Take curries. Could anything be more disgusting than the way he slurped the smegging things down? Using his fingers - lord forbid he would be evolved enough to use cutlery! - to transfer dripping chunks to his mouth. Chewing with his mouth open, arching an eyebrow at Rimmer as if making sure the hologram had noticed. How could a sane human - even a dead one - not notice that fluorescent sauce squishing out from between his teeth and dribbling sickeningly down his front? Then licking his fingers, as if expecting that the action was somehow _sultry_. Then taking a drink of beer.

Yes, beer. That vile drink of the masses. No culture, no élan, no grace resided in that stale, bitter, alcoholic froth, so of _course_ Lister had to love it. He had to pop the top so that the flecks of rancid foam splatted into Rimmer's tea. He had to slurp down can after can, no matter how often Rimmer reminded him that there were _limits_ to what JMC personnel were allowed to consume in a month - limits that Lister would exceed on a good evening. He even drank on duty! On smegging duty! As if an asteroid or evil alien would just kick back and wait because Lister was slurping down yet another lager. To survive out in deep space in a lander that had less substance than a Jessica Simpson lyric, you had to be constantly attentive, but Lister had no desire to be so. No, he left it to _Rimmer_ to pick up his slack, and Rimmer was smegging tired of it. Lister couldn't even put the smegging toilet lid down. Did he not know that the act of flushing aerosolized the bacteria he had just left behind, and that if he left the lid up, they would mingle with the air he breathed, the air that mixed with the beer he swilled and the curries he slobbed?

Maybe Lister didn't care. This was, after all, the man who trimmed his toenails with his teeth, snipping off little dead, stiff half-moons of tissue, then spitting them on his bunk just as he used to spit them on Rimmer's, back when they bunked together. Could he blame Rimmer for being initially reluctant to stick his tongue into that mouth, where curries and beer and toenails and little molecules of waste might well reside? Could he blame Rimmer for suddenly realizing, after having had Lister's hands and tongue all over him, after having had _his_ tongue and hands all over Lister, having swallowed his semen, that it might be a good, healthy, _hygienic_ thing to do to scrub some of that smeg off, so that he felt halfway clean, not sticky and itchy from saliva and dribbled come? Not that Lister cared. He was always snoring that hideous, mucusy snore that Rimmer hated so much by the time the hologram was out of the shower.

That, perhaps, was the worst thing Lister had done. Because Rimmer was always certain that he would towel off and go back to his clean, comfortable, non-scummy, non-beery, non-farty bunk, to sleep in clean comfort. But he would feel cold, and Lister, even in sleep, would look so inviting, and Rimmer would slip into the bunk next to him, just for a moment. Lister would turn in his sleep, interrupting his snores to bury his head into Rimmer's chest, and Rimmer simply could not leave after that. His own bunk barely saw him anymore. How was Rimmer supposed to resist? He was turning into a catamite, a mistress, a lover for the last man alive.

But he just could not bring himself to mind.


	2. The Way

All right, you smegger. If that's the way yeh want it. 

I tried, I did. I put up with yer neuroses, yer meanness, yer snidiness, yer stupid smegging anal-retentive ways. I even cleaned up a bit, myself, throwing out the clothes that was too stained to ever get clean. I lost a little weight, since you was always callin' me fat. Who knows why I did, after all. Did I expect yeh to change, if I did? Be a better person, be a real man instead of a steaming, smeggy pile of hangups? Ya showed me but good. I woulda been better off hunting down frog-GELFs and seeing if smooching one of them would turn it inno a prince. _You_ sure didn't turn into anything good after I kissed ya.

There were times, ya know, when I thought you had. When you would come back and lie in bed after you thought I was asleep. You coulda walked out and slept in yer own too-clean bunk - you sterilized it every morning, I swear ya did. But you'd climb into my bunk and hold me close, and it felt so warm and comfortable, like I belonged in the crook of yer arm. I thought I might be happy doin' that for the rest of my life. Yeah, hunt down Red Dwarf, get back to Earth, and I could have all sorts of animals. I'm guessin' you don't like 'em, so I woulda tended 'em, and you coulda rode a horse wearing - I dunno, a white suit or summit. And we coulda slept close at night, when it got cold. Not a bad life, eh?

I shoulda seen it even back then, though. The way you'd get up before I did, not wakin' me - maybe you went to soft-light so I wouldn't. I'd wake up with a dent in the bunk next to me, and when I went to the midsection for brekkie, you'd be there, all snarky and nasty. Actin' like we didn't spend the night before shaggin' each others' brains out. I'd try to catch yer eye and see a little of that, but you'd never look right at me.

And then you stopped comin'.

I came by yer room a few times - you must have heard me knock. And I slowly got the idea that you was sitting on your bunk every time I did, not sayin' nothin', just wishing as hard as you could for me to _go away_. So what was all of this, eh, Rimmer? Just a lapse? Just a little not-enough-sex bit of frustration you got out, then didn't need anymore? Did you think about alla the stuff your crazy family used to say, and convinced yerself that it was just a hologrammatic glitch? Well, whatever it was, I got the idea. I got the smegging idea. If you could just sit there in yer bunk while the pipes _rotutted_ and _squeenookled_ their way through another cold shower of mine, me tryin' to forget that I was a man with a man's needs, and that you had a body that could satisfy those so well - yeah, if you could just sit there countin' your toes through that, I guess it never really meant nothin' to you at all.

So fecking what. I don't care. I have my AR - yeah, Ahhhnold, my smegging AR. You can go back to Rachel. I have my programs and my cheat codes. Who needs ya, anyway?

Still. I wish I coulda made you change. Sometimes I wonder what it would take to make ya change. For the better, and all. Sometimes, I would see something come through, when we was kissin', before we got to the main event (as it were). Somethin' good. Hell, somethin' lovely. Somethin'... almost like Ace. I couldn't pull that out, but man - I wish I could find what would.

It'd be worth all this heartache, it would.


End file.
